App meets nutrition: EPIC Sport combines nutrition and tech

Following ‘decades of scientific research into why a natural diet allows isolated population groups around the world to avoid age-related rises in blood pressure’, a new sport supplement, EPIC Sport, is aiming to transform the way performance athletes approach cardiovascular fitness.

EPIC Sport reportedly enables sportsmen and women to improve their performance, endurance, recovery and mental alertness, and for the first time, patented technology also allows athletes taking the supplement to monitor their progress and ‘see visible evidence of its health benefits via an accompanying smart phone app.’

Formulated from the natural compound, epicatechin, EPIC Sport adds that the brand is scientifically proven to increase blood flow by up to 68%. EPIC Sport works to improve the elasticity of blood vessels, which decreases vascular resistance, allowing increased flow of oxygenated blood to the muscles and brain when athletes need it most, without putting additional strain on the cardiovascular system.

The result, according to the company, is an enhanced sporting performance using only safe, approved, natural ingredients.

The key bioactive ingredient in EPIC Sport is epicatechin – a form of flavanol, which is composed of safe, naturally occurring molecules that are found in nearly all the fruits and vegetables we consume as part of a normal diet.

The highest concentrations of epicatechin are found in the cacao pod. EPIC Sport adds that when cocoa flavanols are digested by the human body, they change chemically into metabolites. These chemicals improve the body’s ability to produce and maintain the production of nitric oxide, which is essential to enable the inner lining of arterial blood vessels to dilate when increased blood flow is needed, such as during exercise.

EPIC Sport app Billed as the world’s first device to accurately measure the effect of a food supplement; unique to EPIC Sport, athletes can monitor their ‘progress and improvement in cardiovascular age’ following consumption of the supplement by using a free smart phone app.

According to the company, the EPIC Sport app uses a mobile phone’s camera to ‘record increased blood flow and oxygen levels in the skin, using either a facial video or finger video to track variations in light reflectance with more accuracy than the green light technology used in most wearable devices.’

A baseline reading is taken before consuming EPIC Sport, and then a subsequent reading is taken after exercise when the epicatechin reaches a peak, around 2 hours after consumption. Over time, users should be able to see improvements in their cardiovascular health, monitoring 7 key output indicators such as central vascular age, peripheral stiffness index, peak-to-peak time, resting heart rate, maximum heart rate, rate of oxygen uptake and mean arterial blood pressure.

By taking EPIC Sport, the company notes that its natural ingredients provide four key benefits for athletes:

Performance: When blood is directed towards the muscles during cardio workouts, arteries dilate to allow more blood carrying oxygen to the muscles. Epicatechin has been shown to increase exercise capacity by reducing blood flow resistance in the vascular system.

Alertness: Mental alertness has been shown to be closely linked to fatigue. Epicatechin increases blood flow to the brain, to deliver more oxygen and glucose to the frontal lobe, increasing cognition and improving decision making, particularly crucial in team sports.

Endurance: Glycogen depletion is seen as the most common reason for hitting ‘the wall’ in endurance sports such as marathons, but epicatechin reduces the stress on the cardiovascular system by improving blood vessel dilation to improve delivery of glucose to the muscles.